Sleight of Ham

Image credit (because the watermark is so faint): Happy Toast

Well, we’re there. There’s a side show on the main stage spouting truths (if they happen to align with your beliefs) or outrageous lies (if you’re at all connected to reality), and keeping our attention on the antics in front of us while other things happen in the shadows. And the stuff he is producing on stage looks more like it is being pulled out of something other than his nose.

Lest I sound like a conspiracy theorist, let me clarify that the shadows would be the levers of government that are normally quite open and which command the attention of critics and the press. They’re pretty much just as open now, but our collective attention, including the attention of much of the now oft-vilified press, is on the clown at centre stage doing his unwired act while the Republican majority in the House and Senate do whatever they want. And whatever they want seems to have nothing to do with the best interests of their constituents, which is why they are avoiding any encounters with those people back home.

With their trademark thoroughness, they are proposing such delights as reducing bank regulations (remember what the less-regulated banks did a few years back that plunged the world into a giant recession?) and eliminating the environmental protection agency. You can see the thoughtful authorship and research that went into this last one by reading the text of the so-called bill here. Really? You want to just let companies pollute at will and you couldn’t even come up with a piece of legislation that is longer than its own preamble?

There’s a whole list of legislation in the works by the current Congress in this article, which I’m sure would be denounced by some political actors as “fake news”, despite the fact that you can find the texts online just as I did.

And let’s talk about the “fake news” rage. It does seem like a large part of the population has become uncontrollably gullible overnight. When you see a story with an outlandish headline and share it like it’s real news, shame on those who swallow it as real. They might cast their eyes to other stories on the same web page that are equally outlandish, or maybe click on the “about us” tab to discover that the site is humorous or satirical. Instead, in this crazy mixed-up world in which we are living, I find myself having to caption my reposts of the funny satire with a reminder that it is satire and still some readers will go to Snopes to “disprove” it. What’s next, denunciations of the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah’s voice impersonations of the Prestidigitator-in-Chief because the fit black comedian on TV is not actually the T-Rump? I like to think we knew that.

So while he waves about his tweeted rants in front of the crowd, it seems that health care, environmental protection and any controls on the avarice of the super-rich are not the only things disappearing — satire and the capacity to enjoy it in the face of the sad (“Sad!”) reality unfolding before us is also being taken away.